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A Passion for Architecture Revealed Each Holiday Season

Orlando, FL— They start getting calls in January, “Please include me on next year’s list”, or “I need to round-out my collection but I’m missing 1982” or even “My house flooded and all my posters were destroyed. Do you have copies?”  HuntonBrady Architects (www.huntonbrady.com) tries to satisfy every caller because they know how much their annual holiday posters are coveted by Central Floridians and folks even farther away.

 HuntonBrady Architects Principal Clyde A. Brady III, FAIA, started the holiday poster tradition in 1980 as a way to celebrate the holidays and share the Orlando firm’s passion for architecture with the community. For 20 years Brady drew intricate pen and ink images of prominent European cathedrals and institutions, such as Notre Dame in Paris and  Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.  His drawings were transformed into posters and distributed to clients and friends of the firm. Their popularity grew as word spread and collections started. Now the holiday posters grace the walls of homes, offices and institutions all over the world.  

 A collection of the posters were displayed at The Octagon in Washington D.C., the house designed in 1799 by Dr. William Thornton, first architect of the U.S. Capitol. The Octagon now serves as a museum and home to the American Architectural Foundation (AAF). Brady’s “Churches of Europe” poster also won a prestigious American Institute of Architecture (AIA) graphic design award in 1992.

 When Brady retired in 2000, Design Principal Maurizio J. Maso, AIA, continued the firm’s tradition, choosing to work in watercolor and depict historic churches throughout the state of Florida. Some of the churches include Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine (1793) and Old Christ Church in Pensacola (1832).

 “Each drawing takes several days to complete,” Maso explained. “That’s including many hours of research before I do the initial sketch, then final drawing and watercolor. I look forward to it every year.”

2004 marked a new series of posters by Maso depicting significant urban spaces of the world, beginning with Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, followed by Piazza Del Campo in Siena, Italy (2005), Piazza Navonna in Rome, Italy (2006), La Grand Place in Brussells, Belgium (2007), Old Town Square in Prague, Czech Republic (2008), and Nyhavn in Copenhagen, Denmark (2010).

 The 2010 Holiday Poster depicts the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, Italy. The piazza is the city’s main square and is home to some of the most celebrated architecture (and people-watching) in the world, including:

• The Duomo di Milano or Milan Cathedral, which took four centuries to complete and is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned King of Italy there and Mark Twain devoted a chapter of Innocents Abroad to the building.
• The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II glass-roofed shopping mall is an elegant place to dine and shop. Built to connect Piazza del Duomo and Piazza della Scala, It was designed in the late 1800s by  Giuseppe Mengoni and is famous for its glass ceiling and art. Mengoni fell from the roof and diedbefore the inauguration of the arcade in 1878,
• The centre of the square features Ercole Rosa’s 1896 equestrian monument to Vittorio Emanuele II.

 Maso, designer of the new University of Central Florida College of Medicine, is an accomplished architect whose gift at hand sketching led to a successful career in architecture. He was honored by the Florida American Institute of Architects with their 2006 Design Honor Award in recognition of the high quality and depth of his work over a 25+ year career.